Chapter 1351: The Path of Zi Qing

Chapter 1351: Zi Qing’s Path

Crown Prince Zi Qing had fallen.

He did not perish at the hands of the myriad races, but offered himself in sacrifice—melting away within the gaze of Shang Huang’s shattered visage.

Only his skull remained, as if it held all the bitterness of a lifetime unfulfilled. It did not turn to ash, but lay abandoned upon the battlefield.

With him departed…

The very soul of the Zi Qing Upper Kingdom—including Bai Xiao Zhuo and all its people.

On the day they left…

Wang Gu wept beneath torrential rains that fell without cease for an entire month.

Huang Tian too grew shrouded in gloom, its skies churning restlessly for thirty days.

Within the human imperial capital, Emperor Jing Yun ceased holding court. For many days he sat alone, gazing southward, lost in silent reverie.

Only when someone journeyed to Nanhuang Continent and retrieved the crown prince’s skull did the emperor finally stir. Gazing upon it, he let out a sigh heavy with complexity and remorse.

Thereafter, he commissioned a tomb of the highest honor for Crown Prince Zi Qing, and issued an edict declaring that one day, he himself would be buried beside him.

Thus ended the brilliance of Crown Prince Zi Qing.

And thus the Zi Qing Upper Kingdom faded into history—concealed by the myriad races, slowly becoming rumor, until at last… it vanished entirely from memory.

Even its scattered palaces across distant lands became ruins, buried beneath layers of dust.

Only a few early exiles from the Zi Qing Upper Kingdom carried forward its bloodline, scattering like stars across the land.

One such branch settled in Nanhuang Continent.

As centuries passed, Emperor Jing Yun too met his end, and a new sovereign ascended the throne…

With the ever-rising power of the myriad races, humanity’s plight grew increasingly dire.

That branch of Zi Qing descendants in Nanhuang multiplied, struggled, and strove tirelessly through generations of hardship—until at last, they founded a new Zi Qing Kingdom.

Yet alas… as though bound by some unseen curse, many years later, this new Zi Qing Kingdom in Nanhuang was overthrown by three great clans from within, and utterly erased.

From that moment onward, the name “Zi Tu” began to rise in Nanhuang.

As for the Wushuang Plain, where Crown Prince Zi Qing had fallen—time itself seemed to weave its fate together with that of the lost kingdom…

Cities rose there once, only to crumble into rubble amid war.

Scavenger camps appeared too, yet none endured long.

Until the year 2871 of the Human Xuanzhan Calendar, when a group of wandering cultivators arrived upon the Wushuang Plain. There, they built a simple settlement—a place to rest and cultivate.

Moved by compassion, they also took in common folk tormented by alien afflictions.

Gradually, their humble hamlet grew into a proper town.

They named it Wushuang.

…

Human Xuanzhan Calendar, Year 2918.

Tianqi Era of Nanhuang, Year 135.

After decades of growth, Wushuang City had gained renown even in these apocalyptic times—the largest among the many towns dotting the Wushuang Plain.

And today was a grand occasion for Wushuang City.

Streets teemed with people, voices rising in a clamorous hum.

Zi Qing walked among them, clad in coarse hemp robes, his hair tied back simply. In his hand, he held a skewer of candied hawthorns, still warm from the hearth. The amber sugar glaze encasing the crimson fruit caught the midday sun, casting a deceptively sweet shimmer.

The air hung thick with mingled scents—burnt caramel’s cloying sweetness, the acrid smoke of ritual paper offerings, the faint tang of sweat from the crowd, and the wholesome aroma of steamed buns. All blended into a sticky haze that enveloped both Zi Qing and the city called Wushuang.

Today was the Festival of Divine Invocation.

Everything about the festival boiled like a cauldron of broth, bubbling with the clamor of everyday life.

Amidst the din, Zi Qing remained calm, watching the throng, sensing the familiar rhythms around him.

“Fresh candied hawthorns! Crisp and sweet!”

A vendor’s shrill cry pierced through the noise.

“May next year bring good harvests…”

An old woman’s whisper, basket in arm, drowned beneath the tide of footsteps.

“Keep order, everyone! Don’t crowd too tightly!”

City guards shouted futilely against the surging masses.

“Passersby, kind neighbors—step into my shop! Three-colored spirit papers, most efficacious for communing with the divine!”

A paper-offering merchant waved samples aloft.

Countless voices merged into a murky warmth, washing over Zi Qing’s ears.

His fingers felt the bamboo stick’s hardness and chill. His eyes, cutting through the sea of bobbing heads, settled on several familiar figures in the distance—

His parents of this life, and his younger brother nestled gently in his mother’s arms.

The little boy clung to her like a dazed, innocent creature.

Watching them, a trace of reminiscence flickered in Zi Qing’s eyes.

But that memory was like mortal smoke—barely rising before the wind scattered it.

“The hour is near! Run faster!” A group of children clutching crude wooden effigies of deities dashed past Zi Qing like gusts of wind, racing toward the towering altar at the city’s heart—its shape eerily reminiscent of a coffin.

Zi Qing closed his eyes. When he opened them again, his mother seemed to sense his gaze from afar.

Still cradling her youngest son, she turned, her eyes finding him through gaps in the crowd—the eldest son standing quietly with his candied hawthorns, his expression placid to the point of uncanniness.

A tender smile bloomed on her lips. She gave him a slight, affectionate nod.

Her little boy twisted in her arms. At seven years old, his face was soft and clean, his eyes clear—reflecting both the glossy sheen of the candied fruit and a barely perceptible hint of sorrow.

Seeing his elder brother and the treat in his hand, his eyes brightened.

But in the next instant, moisture welled in those clear eyes, reddening their rims. His small mouth puckered.

“This child—why are his eyes red again?” His father’s voice, amused yet helpless, drifted over.

And his mother’s words echoed softly:

“Qing’er, you’re a big boy now—you mustn’t cry every time your brother leaves.”

“Look there—the rites are about to begin.”

The moment those words reached Zi Qing’s ears from afar, his gaze swept past his mother’s gentle profile, past his father’s broad shoulders, past his little brother’s tearful, hopeful eyes—and fixed upon the altar.

Fixed upon the heavens above.

Fixed upon that ancient, fractured, eternally frozen visage.

“The hour has come,” Zi Qing murmured.

Holding his candied hawthorns, he stepped forward—silent as the most solemn observer of a sacred rite.

He walked toward the kin of this life, toward the altar he himself had chosen.

Upon that altar, the priest robed in crimson suddenly flung wide his arms, his voice piercing bone and marrow—a strange, icy tone that ripped through the clamor of the marketplace like a trumpet heralding the end of days.

“In the year One Hundred Thirty-Five of Tianqi, under the sign of Nanhuang, as the moon enters Gui Xu—night falls!”

“We, mere ants, prostrate upon the Twin Capitals, dare offer this foul rite unto the Scarred-Faced God—”

Amid that voice, Zi Qing advanced calmly, lifting his head with quiet resolve.

His gaze pierced through the priest’s swirling red robes, through the terror of the hundred condemned prisoners awaiting slaughter upon the altar, straight into the indifferent, colossal face looming in the heavens above.

That face… remained cold, remained broken.

Yet he knew: the chains of the covenant were already taut.

When he had once offered himself as sacrifice, bartering with the Scarred One for a future, he had sworn that upon his return, he would offer everything he had seen.

Every word of that vow echoed now with the weight of cause and effect.

“Long ago, when the Azure Jade fell to earth and the Black Tortoise snapped its leg, your eyes first opened—then the crimson sun melted into molten iron, boiling the Five Lakes; stars shattered into arrows, piercing the Nine Wilds!”

The priest’s chant grew ever more frenzied, soaring atop the resonance of fate itself.

Zi Qing’s eyes drifted back—to his parents and younger brother.

He saw his father, sensing something amiss, frown slightly and instinctively shift to shield his wife and child behind him.

He saw his mother clutching his little brother, her face still holding traces of tenderness for the boy, mingled now with unease at the priest’s cry.

His tiny brother, frightened by the grim atmosphere, buried his small face deep into his mother’s neck.

Watching them, Zi Qing’s heart lay frozen beneath a lake of utter stillness—no ripples, no emotion, only the cold clarity of one fulfilling a pact.

Even the warmth of the candied hawthorns in his hand was fading, growing as cold as his palm.

“Now, though ruins still smolder with ghostly flames and the living feed on grave soil, blood yet clings to your lashes, reflecting the last gasps of humankind!”

The priest’s voice neared a scream.

“O God!”

“We beg but the breath leaking from between your teeth—that is the fuel by which we steal our lives! We beg but the shadow cast by your brow—that is the shelter wherein common folk flee calamity!”

Like the blade of a guillotine, the priest’s arms slashed downward, pointing fiercely at the prisoners upon the altar!

“May the god close His eyes!”

“May He sleep forevermore!”

“We pray… that He does not open them!!”

“Does not open them!!!”

At that instant, a wave of sound erupted—and as the entire city cried out as one, Zi Qing whispered softly from within the crowd:

“I have returned.”

“To fulfill my vow of old—with all I have seen.”

The moment those words left his lips…

High in the heavens, the eyelid—ancient, sealed shut like a rift in the abyss—twitched.

It lifted… just a sliver.

No light emerged, no feeling—only pure, cold, indifferent void leaked forth from that narrow opening.

The covenant… was complete.

Boom!!

A silent annihilation reverberated deep within Zi Qing’s soul—

the icy echo of a promise kept.

Before his eyes, the world began its ordained end.

Erosion!

Under that gaze, every solid thing composing Wushuang City—the bricks, the wooden beams, the streets—lost instantly the very foundation of their existence.

Silently crumbling, they turned to billions of ash-white particles, swept upward by an invisible tempest, spiraling madly into the sky!

The entire city was being erased, grain by grain, by some unseen hand.

“This… this…”

“The god has opened His eyes!”

“No…”

Countless shrieks of despair replaced the silence, surging through Wushuang City.

All around Zi Qing, lives twisted in grotesque mutation as their cries echoed:

A woman’s skin tore apart, bones cracking audibly!

A child swelled into a fleshy mound studded with pustules and claws!

An elder’s skull split open, revealing compound eyes!

A burly man’s muscles erupted with scales, fangs sprouting from his jaws!

Peaceful Wushuang City, at the moment Zi Qing honored his vow, became a millstone of flesh and blood!

Those untouched by mutation suffered worse—their bodies shattered outright into crimson mist, rising to become a rain of blood!

Life withered en masse, precisely as the covenant decreed.

Through the storm of ash-white dust and scarlet fog, Zi Qing’s eyes fixed coldly upon the distant spot where his parents and little brother stood.

He saw his father whirl around, trying to shield his wife and child—but even as that broad back leaned forward protectively, before the horror and resolve on his face could fully set… his body began dissolving from the fingertips onward, crumbling into ash like a sand sculpture scattered by wind!

No scream, no struggle—swallowed instantly by the skyward torrent of dust, vanishing without a trace.

He saw his mother, still holding his little brother, her gentle expression instantly replaced by overwhelming confusion and terror. She hadn’t even time to look toward where her husband vanished—her whole body stiffened abruptly…

Like a candle tossed into a furnace, she began melting—soundlessly, swiftly—from the crown of her head downward!

Her raven hair, fair skin, tender eyes—every trace of “motherhood”—liquefied under Zi Qing’s fulfilling gaze into thick, dark-red fluid, streaming down the small form of his little brother cradled in her arms!

“Mmm…”

He saw his little brother let out a short, terrified whimper, tumbling from the still-warm pool of his mother’s melted remains onto the ground already slick with viscous gore.

The child curled up in the blood, trembling, drenched in what had once been his mother.

At that moment, the ash-white dust falling from the sky seemed like funeral paper money, mingling with the thick rain of blood, drifting softly earthward.

Death had come in full—so absolute that even those undergoing mutation often collapsed the instant their forms warped.

And the blood rain grew heavier.

Through it, Zi Qing stepped forward, his feet sinking into warm, sticky gore, moving steadily toward the small figure huddled in the crimson puddle.

At last, he stopped before him.

He looked down—at his little brother.

The other's small, fragile shoulders trembled violently, thin garments soaked through by the rain of blood, looking like an abandoned cub in a sea of gore, left with nothing but a silent, monumental terror and bewilderment.

Now, under his steady gaze, the boy raised his head with agonizing slowness.

A tiny face, utterly smeared and caked with clotted blood, tear tracks, and dust, was brought into his line of sight.

Those eyes, once so clear, held nothing now but a boundless emptiness and a colossal dread, resembling two dried-up wells filled to the brim with despair.

Broken syllables, accompanied by a sob that tasted of bloody froth, squeezed painfully from his throat.

"Big brother... Father and Mother..."

Hearing his younger brother's voice, the elder's purple-tinted lips twitched slightly.

The bamboo skewer of the candied hawthorn stick in his palm had, at some unknown point, pierced deeply into his flesh.

Warm beads of blood rolled down the skewer, dripping onto the equally viscous ground, merging with his mother's blood, and with the blood that drenched this entire city.

Yet he felt no pain, only the icy echo of the completed covenant vibrating within his chest.

And so, he offered no explanation.

Any words in the face of a destruction he had wrought with his own hands would be a hypocritical sacrilege.

He had fulfilled his promise, nothing more.

In the end, he merely brought that blood-stained hand down, with greater steadiness, toward his younger brother's equally cold, grime-streaked little head.

The movement carried a heavy gravity that was almost ritualistic.

Simultaneously, with his other hand, he proffered the filthy candied hawthorns, stained with his own fresh blood, before his little brother.

His cracked lips parted, and the voice he uttered was calm and waveless, like the final concluding words of a funeral oration, piercing clearly through the sky full of bloody rain and weathered sobs.

"Little brother."

Looking into those eyes consumed by immense terror, he spoke softly.

"...Do not cry."

The palm began to descend!

Yet, at the exact instant his palm was about to touch his brother's skull, the vault of heaven erupted at this very moment with a sound like the creation of the world, surging up to the heavens!

Beneath that incomparably violent crash, a light tore through time and space, appearing in a flash!

Illuminating the canopy of heaven, illuminating the earth, illuminating the rain of blood!

It was the light of the morning glow!

Blocking out all else, boundless and infinite, like a vast sea, it supplanted everything in this world.

And it enveloped the space where the elder stood as well.

And from within this vast, astonishing, and utterly radiant morning glow, a hand reached out...

And in one swift motion, it gripped the elder's arm, the one about to descend upon his brother's head.

Gripped it fiercely!

Then, with a sudden motion, flung him far away!

The elder's body shuddered violently, and under this terrifying force, he was thrown directly through the air, crashing down in the distance.

A powerful, strange light flared in his eyes as he stared at the figure now materializing within the radiance.

"You have finally arrived here."